Fugitive Ex-tycoon Held For Extradition

January 11, 1986|By Justine Gerety, Staff Writer

Once a multimillionaire, airplane broker Nigel Winfield told U.S. Magistrate Patricia Kyle he now is so broke he was evicted from a home in Davie several days ago for failing to pay his $6,000-a-month rent.

Winfield, 48, a fugitive for nearly eight months, was arrested by U.S. marshals at the Bonaventure Hotel west of Davie, where he said he has been staying with his wife and daughter for $180 a night.

Money - or a recent lack of it - set off the chain of events that led to Winfield`s appearance on Friday before Kyle in Fort Lauderdale.

In the end, Kyle ordered that he be held without bail pending extradition to Delaware, according to testimony.

``I used to live in a house worth $2 million, which I lost,`` Winfield told Kyle, referring to a 20-acre ranch on Stirling Road in unincorporated west Broward County that his family left in a separate eviction in June.

But from July through September, Winfield said, his wife sold her jewelry to pay $20,000 in rent at the home in Davie.

The former racehorse owner and principal in the Winfield Jet Center was arrested for his failure to surrender to U.S. marshals in Delaware, where he had been held in contempt of court for failure to pay a $102,000 judgment in a lawsuit.

Winfield had been jailed there for a time, but gained conditional release after convincing a judge he might raise the money if released temporarily, according to court documents.

But Winfield neither paid an installment of the money nor obeyed an order to report back to U.S. marshals, records show.

Winfield`s attorney, Milton Grusmark, said his client would fight extradition. The lawyer said a Delaware judge`s order that Winfield be imprisoned until he clears himself of the contempt charge might be ``improper constitutionally.``

``It`s an imprisonment for debt,`` Grusmark said. ``It`s imprisonment because of inability to raise the money the judge ordered.``

Four years ago, Winfield`s family members were well-placed in the world of thoroughbred racing.

Nigel`s father, Malcolm Winfield, sold half-interest in Proud Appeal, a colt that was the Kentucky Derby favorite, for $5 million. Another Winfield horse, Irish Tower, was consistently winning major races in New York.

Then the New York Racing Association announced that the horses owned by Malcolm Winfield would no longer be permitted to race at tracks in the state because Nigel Winfield owned 90 percent interest in them.

Nigel Winfield`s racing application was denied in New York on the basis of an existing felony record and a federal indictment pending in Memphis, Tenn.

In September 1982, Nigel Winfield was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Memphis to six months in prison for attempting to defraud Elvis Presley six years earlier of $330,000 in a complex lease agreement for a small luxury jet.

Winfield filed in 1984 for protection from his creditors under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code, but the case was dismissed last fall because Winfield failed to live up to a schedule for payment of his debts.

Though he has been classified as a fugitive since May, Winfield said he had been living with his wife and daughter in Davie for at least six months.

Five days a week, he said he traveled to an office in Miami, where he attempted to sell airplanes. But his last sale was of a Boeing 727 18 months ago, he said.

Winfield also told Kyle he had not filed federal income tax returns since 1977.